


Fixed

by KisstheRainWriting



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Donna Noble always being right about everything, F/M, Reader Insert, lil fluff, request
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24187594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KisstheRainWriting/pseuds/KisstheRainWriting
Summary: You lose a new friend in Renaissance Italy; when you want to travel back to save her, the Doctor doesn’t handle it well. Luckily, Donna Noble’s the only sane person on this ship. [Request.]
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Reader, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Reader
Comments: 5
Kudos: 42





	Fixed

“Well?”

When you turned to him, the Doctor felt a heaviness settle in his limbs. The weight of that expectant gaze, the steady surety as you waited for him to dash to the console and beginning pulling levers, twisting knobs, twisting time, back to about twenty minutes ago. Your hair was still wild from running, all tangled and frizzed. He could feel Donna watching his response, could picture her concern as she stood by the TARDIS entrance. She already knew, she’d already been where you were.

“We can’t.”

You were still in your sixteenth-century linen dress, so as you stared at him, trying to process his harsh tone, you looked like a painting, all soft creams and deep greens against the gold light of the TARDIS. Tragic, he thought. You looked beautiful and tragic. He hated it. Looking at you made his throat tight, so he stopped; approaching the console, eyes locked on the controls, he simply dematerialized the TARDIS into the Time Vortex.

“We… can’t,” you repeated. It wasn’t quite a question, wasn’t a statement.

“We’d be crossing our own timeline, Y/N, you know we can’t do that,” blunt was better, he thought. It was useless, he knew that. Knew that better than anyone, and now you’d know it. Best to be dismissive, to cut it off. “Her death is a fixed point.”

You shook your head. “No.”

“It is. It’s fixed, there’s no changing it.” He steadied the TARDIS’s flight path. “Might as well go and get in your normal clothes, we’re not going back.”

You looked desperately at Donna. Immediately, she brushed past the Doctor to join your side, rubbing your shoulder. She didn’t speak, she didn’t have too; Donna, in spite of the constant snark evidencing the contrary, had one of those rare abilities to just radiate unspoken empathy. It was a relief, as the Doctor glared at anything but you. You closed your eyes, and when you closed them, you saw paint and ruins and falling. 

You’d stopped in early sixteenth-century Rome that morning, just one of those “See where the old girl takes us” sort of days. Wandering a marketplace, the Doctor rattling off fun(ish) facts about the Renaissance, you and Donna half-shopping, half-mimicking the Doctor behind his back. You’d met a girl there, fifteen, maybe sixteen, who worked in her family’s spectacle shop in Florence and now sold the funny little glasses at a small stall here in Rome. Antonia had happily been swept up into one of your adventures; it had been chaos, but the fun kind—the Sistine chapel, you and Antonia weaponizing paint chisels, Donna attempting to play the lute. When you’d finally parted ways with Michelangelo (still majorly afraid of heights but assured that he’d painted all the figures on the ceiling himself, and that none were actually little aliens scuttling around, dropping onto passersby to steal their eyes), the four of you had chased the slippery creatures for miles, up to the top of the Colosseum. 

The Doctor had been mapping out the coordinates to return the aliens to their home planet, muttering rapid mental math, when Antonia had reached into her bag and casually handed the Doctor a telescope to help his calculations. Not a spyglass, but an astronomical telescope that could properly see the stars. Working late at her father’s shop, surrounded by lenses her whole life, she’d invented one from spare parts and had hoped to sell it at the market that day.

It was brilliant, far too brilliant, and far, _far_ too early. The Doctor had said Galileo wouldn’t make a telescope that powerful for another hundred years. It was then that everything had gone wrong, so quickly and painfully wrong that you still hadn’t caught your breath. An alien had escaped the chest you’d secured them in, slipping out a crack in an oily, pigmented mess. As you’d talked, it trickled up Antonia’s dress, sweeping down over her face in a terrible hood. You hadn’t heard her scream, hadn’t seen her really move. One minute she was there, beside you, all brightness and laughter, and the next, she was over the side.

You opened your eyes to stop the memory of her fall, slow and almost weightless. “Doctor… We have to. We just have to go back.”

The Doctor shook his head, looking tired. “Think about it: if she lives, what happens? Best case scenario?” 

“Then humanity’s better for it!”

“Yes,” the Doctor’s voice raised. There was a grittiness to it that you’d never had directed your way before. “Your species jumpstarts their scientific revolution. Little too soon, the technology a little too different. Completely alters the entire course of human history, changes when humanity reaches the stars. Then that affects first human interaction with alien life, introduces new variables to intergalactic relations on an unknown scale. The whole history of the galaxy, rewritten in a minute.”

“Victorians in space,” Donna offered.

The Doctor gave her a grudging “Exactly.”

You shrugged Donna off. “But she’s going too soon and it’s not fair. What’s even the point of this if you can’t save people like her?”

_How many times had he heard that? Thought that?_

“I don’t think you get it. The very fabric of reality depends upon this.”

“Says who?” you demanded, fists clenched at your sides. 

“Says me!” he slammed his palm down, hard, onto the console “Says the laws of time. Great people die every day, Y/N. That’s how it is. That’s how this,” he gestured to the TARDIS with his other hand, “all works.”

You’d turned quiet. You had to clear your throat before you could speak again, and when you did, your eyes burned. “That’s awful.”

“Yeah, well,” the Doctor affected a shrug, his grip on the console white knuckled. “A child like you couldn’t possibly understand. Better you save yourself the headache and just enjoy the pretty scenery.”

“ _Doctor_ ,” Donna gave him a reproachful look. “Y/N, he doesn’t mean it—”

You felt like you were breathing heavily, even though you hadn’t moved. “You,” you swallowed, “you can be so terrible, Doctor.”

You pushed Donna away, sweeping out of the console room and its heavy silence.

The Doctor finally looked up. Donna was hovering at the console. Her lips pursed into a thin line, eyes far too solemn—and a little teary. The Doctor heard her take a deep breath, saw her set her shoulders a little firmer, and open her mouth to speak.

He interrupted the thought. “Donna, I don’t much want to talk right now.”

“D’you remember Pompeii?” her question was quiet, so quiet and therefore so not-Donna that he startled into something closer to calm.

“Course I do,” he said. Immediately his posture deflated. “Old Caecilius. I think that’s a face that’s going to stick around with me for a while.”

“You remember what I asked you, then?”

_Just save someone._

The Doctor slumped back, released a slow sigh up at the ceiling. “It’s not the same, not even remotely similar. You asked for one person, one family, among thousands. This fixed point is just one person,” he tugged at his coat sleeve. “I can’t save her. Doesn’t work like that.”

“I know,” Donna approached him, dropped down to his level, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I know. Been with you for a bit, I’ve seen it before. But… when you’ve just looked at that person, laughed with that person, and then you know that they’re really gone… Doctor, it’s hard.”

If he softened here, he knew he’d crack. “You think I don’t know that?”

“No, I think you do. I think you know that better than anyone should have to.” She cocked her head, a ginger lock falling from the elaborate Renaissance updo you’d attempted for her. “We had a proper fight in Pompeii, remember?”

He didn’t know whether he should chuckle at her tone or grimace at the memory, and ended up doing a bit of both. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Wanted to punch you,” she added, off-handedly.

“I bet.”

“Right in your skinny little face,” she continued. “Just slap you silly.” There was a beat, then, as she looked nostalgically into the distance, “Honestly, could have blown on you and you'd’ve fallen over. KO.”

“Yes, thank you, Donna.”

“My point is,” she ignored his little flare-up, “my point is that when one of us gets upset over something like this, it‘s new for us. You’ve got to keep that perspective, as best you can. Because I think… I think you get angry when we remind you what that feels like for the first time. Just angry and broken about everything you’ve seen. All those people. Can’t imagine how that builds up…” Donna leaned forward, forcing him to look at her. “But it’s not fair, and it’s not kind, what you’re doing to her now. You know that?”

The Doctor exhaled. “… I know.”

Donna nodded, satisfied. She glanced toward the hall you’d disappeared down. “She’ll be beating herself up over this. You really should go on after her.”

“You’re right.” He took a moment to collect himself, ran a hand through his hair, before getting to his feet.

“Always am. One day that’ll get through your thick alien skull.” Donna watched him straighten his shirt, place his coat on the console chair. She could feel his anxiety from here. _Bless him_. “And don’t forget to apologize.”

“I will.”

“… And tell her you love her.”

“ _Donna_.”

Donna watched him head after you. She tutted under her breath. “Stubborn idiot. Who does he think he’s kidding.”

Then, for the first time after everything that had happened, Donna let herself have a good cry.

—

The Doctor rapped his knuckles on your door. He couldn’t hear you moving on the other side. Maybe you’d decided to ignore him. Maybe you’d ask him to leave later. Maybe you’d realized that this is what he was actually like, burnt out and old and—

The door opened.

But the TARDIS had done it, he realized. Empty doorway. You were up in the lofted area of your room, staring out a virtual window into a simulated summer storm. The TARDIS had certainly spoiled you. Your dress was crumpled up on the floor. You’d replaced it with raggedy pajamas you’d brought from home. 

At the sound of the door, you’d turned, quickly wiping at your face. He started to say something, not even sure what, when you spoke first.

“I know I don’t understand anything, and I’m just along for the ride,” you began, shirtsleeves knotted up in your hands but your eyes sparking. “But what you said was needlessly awful. And if caring is childish, then I’m childish. And–and if you’re going to send me home, then at least put me in the right place this time.”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupted, softly. “I brought tea.”

You stared at him, caught off-guard, finally seeing the mug in his hand. The other was behind him. “Oh.”

“And you’re right.”

You sniffed. It sounded suspicious. “… I am?”

He nodded. He set the tea down on your dresser. “Sometimes it feels like there isn’t a point to this,” he admitted. It ached. “To traveling. With me. Sometimes I can’t save everyone. Sometimes there are rules that I have to follow, that I have to force myself to follow, even when it hurts, even when good people are the price. It can be overwhelming, even for me.” He looked up again. Your gaze was soft. “And I hate to see you feel the weight of that, even once.”

The Doctor held out Antonia’s telescope toward you. “I think she would have wanted you to have this.”

You descended the little staircase from your loft (momentarily sidetracked, the Doctor wondered if your ceiling was higher than the other bedrooms). You were still wrapped up in a blanket. Gingerly, you took the telescope. “Thank you.”

“She did what she set out to do,” he said, quietly. “She saw the stars.”

You rolled the invention over in your hands. “But she could have done more.”

“That’s usually the way it goes.”

Your blanket fell to the floor, and you hugged him, probably a little harder than you’d meant to. You shuddered. The Doctor held you like that for a moment, arms coming up around your waist.

He wanted to kiss you.

Wasn’t the first time, if he was being honest; wasn’t the third or the fourth or the fiftieth. He knew that twist in his stomach, that heaviness in his chest. You looked up at him through red-rimmed eyes. Your eyeliner was smudged. His shirt was wet where your cheek had leaned against it. And he wanted to kiss you.

He exhaled. Slowly. Pressed a chaste kiss to your temple. It wasn’t the time. Sometime it would be.

The Doctor cleared his throat, careful not to jostle you. “Tea’s getting cold.”

You pressed your face into his chest and nodded. “Yeah, sorry.” He could feel the warmth of your skin through his shirt. He tried to memorize what that felt like. 

“Hey, enough of that now,” he mock-scolded, after a pause. “We’ve had our fair share of sorries for today.”

That earned him a watery smile. “Right.” When you took a step back, he awkwardly rocked back on his heels.

“So. Movie night with Donna?” he offered. He held out his hand, hoped hard that you’d take it.

You did. You started leading him, slowly, back down to the console room. “Sounds perfect. But you have to let her pick.”

The Doctor grimaced. “Ack, why? You know she’ll just pick _Beaches_ again.”

“Part of your penance for earlier.”

He was just relieved to hear you tease him. “Eh, fair enough. She gave me the full riot act already, you know.”

“Good.” He grinned at the smirk in your response. “Doctor?”

He paused, looking down at you. “Yeah?”

“Thank you,” you squeezed his hand. “And I’m sorry that sometimes it feels like this.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic took me on a JOURNEY. We’re talking about building a timeline for the development of eyeglasses/telescopes/concave lenses, wait is Michelangelo here JOURNEY (also I’m sorry if any of the timeline is still wrong, I am but a humble writer lady, I don’t pretend I know what I’m doing with anything). 
> 
> I’ve been so excited, though, because this is officially my first tumblr request!! The ask was: "hey! I’m not sure if you take requests, but if you do can a Tenth Doctor/Reader fic? Can it be angsty at the beginning but then fluffy? Like they are arguing bc almost changed a fixed time point in history and they storm off while Donna gives advice to the doctor? If you can do that, thanks! And if you can’t, then no problem!"
> 
> It's a little bit fudged on the fixed-point/historical event part. I tried to settle on a historical figure or a more solid historical event. I’d convinced myself that Copernicus had been killed for heresy, so the first draft was all about Copernicus and reacting to his being executed. But centuries-old-spoiler: he was not. Which, I mean, good for him, that’s great. Then I tried Joan of Arc, but that felt Super Weird. I somehow ended up with a little fictional spectacle Renaissance inventor? Anyway, let me know what you think. I hope you’re well. ♥


End file.
